


Death's Kiss

by PersonyPepper



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Creature Jaskier | Dandelion, Falling In Love, Fluff, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Loves Jaskier | Dandelion, Humor, Jaskier is Death, Jaskier | Dandelion Loves Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, M/M, Murder, Non-Human Jaskier | Dandelion, POV Jaskier | Dandelion, Torture, but painful nonetheless, idk how i managed to pull that off with the absolute pain going on in the rest of this fic lol, to neither geralt nor jaskier :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27360322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PersonyPepper/pseuds/PersonyPepper
Summary: Grass withers under his feet, paling with his footsteps; Jaskier takes the last moments of freedom to watch his touch kill before he pulls on his boots and tugs on his doublet, leaving it unbuttoned. A lute is slung over his back, his hair is wind-ruffled as he throws on a smile of a happiness he will never feel.He is Death, and death leeches life, leeches love, and happiness; Death does not experience it.Or, Jaskier is Death, and follows Geralt around as a bard.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion & Roach
Comments: 28
Kudos: 463





	Death's Kiss

The wildflowers tickle at Jaskier’s hand, their petals soft between his fingers. He tells himself he takes pleasure in the way the wilt under his touch, the way their beauty rots in front of his eyes. He is Death, and he is to love the monstrosity he brings. Grass withers under his feet, paling with his footsteps; Jaskier takes the last moments of freedom to watch his touch kill before he pulls on his boots and tugs on his doublet, leaving it unbuttoned. A lute is slung over his back, his hair is wind-ruffled as he throws on a smile of a happiness he will never feel.

He is Death, and death leeches life, leeches love, and happiness; Death does not _experience_ it.

The townsfolk throw bread at him, and Jaskier pretends he isn’t filled with glee at the sight of their annoyed eyes. Annoyance is better than fear, annoyance is better than hatred and curses. The witcher hasn’t moved, good; Jaskier can smell him, the way he reeks of the blood that refuses to wash away despite years of trying, the way sorrow haunts him, and the misery that swallows him. The Butcher of Blaviken, Geralt of Rivia.

“Three words or less.” Jaskier’s heart beats black; he wonders if Geralt can tell. “What did you think of my singing?” **  
**

The witcher glares at him, scowling. “They’re not real.” As if Jaskier hasn’t guided each of the souls every witcher has ever felled to its afterlife, but understandable, he supposes. He’s just a little bard to the witcher’s eyes, after all. Geralt turns over his coin pouch, his last coin rolling onto the table and twisting in a low dance before falling flat. It’s useless, Jaskier can’t buy half a morsel of food with it, but it’s his first earning from his song he pretends not to care about. He slips it into his pocket, copper warm in his breeches pocket. 

“Hey,” he calls after the witcher. He takes a moment to give the tavern a mocking bow before running out to catch up with Geralt. “I could be your barker! Just think about it.” The witcher ignores him, saddles his horse before mounting her. “Come on, please? I’ll starve!” A bard, Jaskier once heard, either a bard had to be a good singer, or a good liar. Death doesn’t need to eat, but he does have souls to lead.

Geralt glares, scowls. 

Jaskier happily follows Roach, singing at the top of his lungs in his wrong footwear.

–

It is a few years later that Jaskier the Bard is invited to a court. The King is a man of fancy will. Jaskier watches him as he bards over tables and across the grand hall. The kingsmen are a rowdy bunch, knights singing along to Jaskier’s song at the top of his lungs, and throwing back beer after ale after beer. The crown princess looks entirely undelighted at the processeedings, face pale. Glamour hides a bond bite in her neck, and Jaskier knows she will not be marrying any man here.

Geralt digs into his turkey, stripping its flesh clean and licking away the grease of his spoon. He is entirely uncaring of the party, so it’s being called, around them. His hair is clean, and he’s dressed in a doublet lined with buttercups. Buttercups truly reflect Death too well. Beautiful, unstoppable, and lethal. Ironic that Geralt’s dressed like he belongs to a man with the same name. In a way, though, they are each other’s. Friends, when no one else would befriend them, could befriend them. They are monsters, a murderer in the name of a saviour, and Death Himself… 

Friends. Jaskier plops into the seat next to him, and steals his ale for his parched throat, he claims. The high praise of the boisterous court has him feeling… something. Feeling something he hasn’t felt before. Geralt glares and calls him a silly bard, and the feeling grows louder, brighter. 

Jaskier goes to sleep that night, flushed, tired, and happy. 

–

Monsters are rarely different from humans. They are kind to those they love, and fierce against those they do not know; yet, they’re treated as lessers simply because they strike fear. Scratch that, Jaskier thinks. Monsters are infinitely different from humans, for humans are a vile sort of evil, and monsters a little kinder driven by their animal instinct. The power of thought is sublime in and of itself, and humans use it in the stupidest manner he’s ever seen.

The bruxa holds the broken body of her lover, the human princess pale under the cold of the night. The bruxa cries, tucking her face into that of her lover’s broken neck, holds her broken hand and shudders and sobs and sicks when she realizes what the humans have done to her lover. Bodies are not meant to be limp, not in the way the princess’ is; she is a bag of skin stuffed with crushed bone. Her head has been left intact, but it only serves to accentuate the wrongness of the rest of her body; her bond mark is scarred with knife marks as if someone’s tried to carve the very love out of her.

“What have they _done_ ,” the bruxa cries. Jaskier has not known sadness, has known no human pain, but his chest aches as the bruxa agonizes over her lover as if Death’s heart tries to grow and sop her pain away.

They have killed her, the Princess. Mutilated her body and crushed it bone by bone, torn it muscle by muscle to find a cure for loving a monster. Her wrists are still raw, scabbed, and bloody from her restraints, barely bleeding for Death had taken her when the evening was still early. Geralt brushes down Roach some feet away; he can’t look. He’s seen worse, Jaskier knows, and yet, he rests his forehead against Roach’s shoulders, and tries not to let his knees collapse underneath him. The bruxa’s cries stifle, and she looks up at Jaskier. **  
**

“Is she happy?” Jaskier nods. 

“She’s worried about you.” He lets the princess look through his eyes, and he feels her sob from her afterlife, unable to see her bruxa so saddened. 

The bruxa presses a kiss to the princess’ cold forehead, and gently sets her body down, her eyes fond. “I loved her. We were bonded. Does she love me, still?” Jaskier silences the air around them, so Geralt may not hear, glamours them as if she’s still sobbing, and Jaskier’s still watching. 

“She does.” He takes the bruxa’s hand, helps her to stand upon shaking legs. He knows what she is to ask of him, and he knows that he will give it. “You will be together,” he assures her, he will make sure of it himself.

“Death take me,” she mutters, eyes clear and voice sure. “Take me to her.” Her body goes limp in his arms, and he’s gentle to settle her body beside her lover’s. **  
**

Her soul smiles at him, all sharp teeth, waves, and Jaskier guides her into her lover’s arms.

He looks back down at their bodies once more before returning to camp. Geralt whets his swords, not meeting his eyes. 

Crickets dare not chirp on a day so evil, but the moonlight shines unwaveringly like the hope the princess and the bruxa had held. “It’s not so uncommon to die of heartbreak, is it, Jaskier?” Jaskier looks up at him, at the ghostly way fire flicks across his pale face, at the way shadows carve into the contours of his eyes and cheeks. 

“It is. True love is uncommon itself. Death does not grant death to those who are not ready for it; That bruxa would have died sooner or later, it’s best that heartbreak took her.” 

“You know much about death.” Jaskier wants to laugh.

“As do you, dear witcher,” he says, glancing at his hands, “Shall we give them a proper funeral, then?” **  
**

The smoke of their bodies rise into the air; neither of them cough. Jaskier does not know sadness, but he knows grief.

Geralt grieves. 

And Death’s black heart beats something red.

–

The sun shines, warming the Continent under its gaze. Death lounges in the wheat fields, basking in its light. Roach rests her head against his stomach, and Geralt naps beside him. The King is long-dead, as are the knights under his care, and each body with the princess’ blood on its hands lay in ash or at the bottom of the lake two days away. Jaskier had delighted in leading them to their afterlives, each of them to be tortured as the Princess had been; forced to fall in love, and beaten to something beyond pulp knowing how their lover awaits them. Death closes his eyes, and listens to their screams, a beautiful music only he can hear. **  
**

Geralt shuffles closer to Jaskier. He reaches out blindly, muttering in his sleep, and Roach finds herself with a mouthful of a witcher’s hand. Jaskier laughs as Geralt startles awake, a sheepish blush on his face faced with an indignant Roach. “Good morning,” Jaskier tells him. His first copper coin is warm in his breeches pocket. Geralt hums, and lays back down beside Jaskier, an inch away, if that. They are both clean from the river that had flowed into the lake, and they are both happy. Roach huffs and turns onto her side to bask in the sunlight and take a nap of her own. 

“Hungry?”

Death does not know _love_. And yet, he hungers. He hungers to press a kiss between Geralt’s shoulders as he turns to grab their waterskins and saddlebag of food, and to take his hand into his own. **  
**

Death is no monster, but rather, Jaskier has learnt, is a bringer of justice. 

And Geralt is no more a monster than any man trudging through life’s shit.

The bruxa and her princess have tea in their garden, holding hands and watching their children play with their litter kittens. The screaming of men is stifled by the sound of their laughter, their happiness, a feeling that Jaskier has become intimately familiar with. 

Death does not hunger, for he needs no food, and _yet_ …

Geralt waits for a reply before growing impatient and throwing half a loaf of bread at Jaskier.

And yet… here they are. 

“You’re an ass,” he calls, “I’ll have you know that you’re throwing bread at the Continent’s most renowned bard!” Death is still feared, but Jaskier is adored. Geralt throws a waterskin at him, and Jaskier smiles and pretends not to see Geralt’s grin. 

He is radiant, silver locks tinting gold under the yellow light. Jaskier wants to kiss him. Geralt lays back down next to him, chewing at his bread and watching the clouds. Jaskier turns to his front, head held up with the palm of his hand. 

“I’d like to kiss you.” Geralt looks at him, hair sprawled around him in rays as if he is the sun itself, followed by Death. How unreasonable it is, for Jaskier to love a man so like him and unlike him all the same. **  
**

Geralt smiles, a dimple that so rarely makes an appearance digging into the small of his lips.

“Is Death’s kiss not fatal to witchers, Jaskier?” He _grins_ , the bastard, and Jaskier thinks this is what death _feels like_ , his heart too fast, his body too warm—

Geralt pulls him down by the back of his neck, blinks his golden eyes up at him, and Jaskier stares back with slightly wide blues.

Geralt’s lips are soft beyond compare. 

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hey, what's that? I'm back on my bullshit? Nice. 
> 
> this was a prompt fill for lovely @amadcat570 :)


End file.
